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All Rise...

Appellate Judge Mac McEntire's high school football team lost to Vampire Academy at homecoming.

The Charge

Live fast, die young, bad girls do it well.

Opening Statement

Another week, another bestselling young adult novel adapted into a Hollywood
film. These are done in the hopes of kicking off a huge franchise, in pursuit of
a slice of the profitable Harry Potter/The Hunger Games pie. How many of
these things have been released in recent years? Vampire Academy hopes to
distinguish itself from the (blood) pack.

Facts of the Case

Rose (Zoey Deutch, Ringer) and Princess Lissa (Lucy Fry, Mako Mermaids) have run away from
home—or, to be specific, away from the prestigious St. Vladimir's boarding
school. Lissa is a Moroi, a peaceful, non-immortal breed of vampire. Rose is a
Dhampir, half-human half-vampires who act as bodyguards to the Moroi. Rose is
letting Lissa drink her blood to keep Lissa alive while they're in hiding.

Rose and Lissa are apprehended and returned to St. Vladimir's, which is a
school exclusively for Moroi and Dhampirs. Once there, Lissa is the target of
vandalism and violent attacks. Rose tries to investigate who's after her friend,
while also getting closer with Russian Dhampir (Danila Kovlosky,
Dukhless). Waiting in the wings are the Strigoi, an immortal, violent
breed of vampire that wants nothing more than to destroy the Moroi.

The Evidence

I wanted to like Vampire Academy. I went in hoping it would surprise
me and that, even if it were cheesy, I'd still be engaged in the story and
characters. Then the movie begins. In the opening scene there are about three
"As you already know" lines of expository dialogue, telling the audience
important plot points while sounding nothing like something a person would
actually say. Then Rose lets Lissa bite her. This should be played up for its
intensity and weirdness, showing that Rose is someone willing to go the most
extreme lengths possible for her friend. It should be the part that makes
viewers lean forward in their seats, thinking, "Whoa, this movie's going to go
in strange, unexpected places." Instead, Rose just bares her neck and Lissa goes
in for the bite. This signature moment, what you could call the movie's mission
statement, is filmed so flatly and matter-of-factly that it leaves no impact on
the audience. This sets the stage for the rest of the movie, in that it's
overstuffed with exposition yet lacks any creativity or emotional
investment.

Not that Vampire Academy doesn't try. There are three types of vamps
to keep track of, but also the vamps have magic powers, based on the old fantasy
magic cliché of air, water, earth, and fire. So they're grouped into those
four groups as well. Other characters have additional magic powers, such as
psychic abilities. With Lissa as a princess, we've also got to deal with drama
amid the vampire royal family. As this is a school, there's also a bullying mean
girl causing trouble and a sourpuss headmistress running the place. A better
movie would have these elements as puzzle pieces combining into a larger whole
that is the plot. Instead, the script constantly throws new concepts and ideas
at you, giving them little to no payoff. Here the thing: This movie is about a
school for vampires, but it never once plays up the novelty of what it's like to
be at a school for vampires. Classes just have everyone practicing their magic,
so it might as well be Hogwarts—it's even surrounded by a forest filled
with CGI monsters, to make it more Hogwarts-like. (That was a spoiler, but ehh.)
What is a school for vampires like? After watching this movie, I still couldn't
tell you.

Shouldering the burden of the most of the movie is our hero Rose. Many
people have compared Zoey Deutch to Ellen Page's performance in Juno, and I must admit I saw the similarity as
well. Rose speaks only in sarcasm, with every line a quip of some kind. No
matter what the situation, she wisecracks her way through it. The idea is that
her spunkiness makes her the "every-girl," the normal human surrounded by the
supernatural fang gang. Except no, because she's already invested and immersed
in the vampire world. You could argue that Rose's non-stop snark is a defense
mechanism. Except no again, because she never quite has that moment where her
personal defenses break down and we see the "real" her. The constant verbal
barbs and jabs just make her look like a jerk. Also, it's way too much of a
stretch for the petite-looking Deutch to be throwing around musclebound dudes
twice her size during the action scenes. No way does her tiny wrist block a blow
from a stuntman whose arm is wider than her whole head. You could argue that
being a Dhampir gives her supernatural strength, but she's just fighting other
Dhampirs. I know I'm coming off like a total jerk here by commenting on the
actress's physicality, but there are other, better ways to do these things,
like, say, have her do one of those Muay Thai/Ong Bak moves where she jumps up and
knees her opponent in the chin. But, no, it looks like they're rehearsing fight
choreography rather than actually duking it out.

As for Lissa, she's more of a plot point than she is a character. Everything
revolves around her being targeted, and there's all this talk about how
important she is and how everyone has to keep her safe. The entire story has to
do with her, but she's not the protagonist, and this makes her come across as an
object rather than a person. There's a stretch of movie where she uses hypnotic
"persuasion" magic to goad her fellow vamps into a scheme, and later we're told
this was a metaphor for the whole clique/popularity thing. First, a movie should
never tell the audience what its own metaphors are. Second, it wasn't clear at
the time that misusing her powers was character development. This part of the
story comes and goes pretty quick, establishing what it needs to establish,
skipping over how it affects Lissa's character. Lissa is also given a romantic
interest, but it's so shortchanged that at the end when she declares she has a
boyfriend now, I was all, "She does?" As the movie concludes, we're left with
Lissa as a non-character.

The script has a few scenes with voiceover, in which Rose fills us in on
information. This only happens a couple of times, and is only there to explain
things or set up the next scene. If that wasn't enough lazy screenwriting,
there's another scene in which Rose talks to her pet cat, explaining to it (and
the audience) exactly what she's feeling at that moment. Right now, every
screenwriting class everywhere in the world is teaching first-timers the
standard of "show, don't tell." Now here's Vampire Academy, a
multi-million dollar Hollywood film that violates the simplest basics of what
beginners learn.

What's really sad as that this script comes from Daniel Waters, writer of
one of my all-time favorite films, Heathers. This both does and doesn't
explain a lot. Rose's non-stop sarcasm definitely evokes the exaggerated
teen-speak of the gang at Westerberg High. Perhaps Waters was hoping to
recapture some of the ol' Heathers magic, or perhaps studio executives
were hovering over his shoulder, saying "Make it more like Heathers!"
Either way, that sort of heightened dialogue can be brilliant in context, but
it's not right for every film. In Vampire Academy the seemingly-endless
stream of pseudo-teen witticisms feels out of place, and is more distracting
than clever.

Vampire Academy looks and sounds great on Blu-ray, which is to be
expected for a recently-made Hollywood flick. Colors and flesh tones really pop
off the screen in this 2.39:1/1080p HS transfer rich with detail and vibrancy.
The DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track offers up dialogue that's clear and many pop
songs fill the room with sound. For extras, there's an alternate opening, some
deleted scenes, an interview with author Richelle Mead in which she explains how
she originated the Vampire Academy world, and a digital copy of the
film.